A TEAM leader of a Halton midwives ante-natal clinic has revealed that teenage mums are on the increase in the borough.

Julie McIntosh, a midwife and leader of the Rees Team, which is one of four teams based in Widnes and Runcorn, claims her clinic in Highfield Road, Widnes, is seeing a rise in the number of teenagers giving birth.

She said: 'We do deal with a lot of teen pregnancies. There is a high rate of this in the borough and although midwives across Halton educate them on contraception many of them are still looking to have a second child - to get the 'pregnancy thing' out the way.

'The thing is that many of the young women who have fallen pregnant are just kids themselves.'

New figures released from the Office of National Statistics show that Halton is not alone in its teen preg-nancy problem after its research indicated pregnancy rates of girls under the age of 16 rose by 1% between 2002 and 2003 to eight conceptions per 1,000 girls.

The Government's new families minister, Beverley Hughes, hinted that the soaring number of young girls becoming pregnant was a problem for parents to tackle, not the Government.

She said: 'We really need parents to now see themselves as making an absolutely unique and vital contribution to this issue.

'It is a contribution that I don't think anyone else can actually make.'